


Freckles and Constellations

by bugdude



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Cute, Famous Dan Howell, Fluff, M/M, Okay enjoy i guess, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, also they ship phan, band au, chris and pj annoy the shit out of dan but he loves them, dan plays guitar, famous/non-famous, non-famous phil, phil plays the triangle, um um what else
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:53:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27804898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bugdude/pseuds/bugdude
Summary: When Dan told his meddling bandmates about his crush on roadie Phil Lester, he wasn't expecting them to do anything about it. Least of all drag him out on stage with an instrument that barely even counts as an instrument. He really should have known better.orDan is the lead guitarist in an up-and-coming band. Phil plays the fucking triangle. It becomes a thing.
Relationships: Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 18





	Freckles and Constellations

**Author's Note:**

> hi!
> 
> this started out as a oneshot inspired by someone's dream on twitter, and now, more than a year later, i'm finally working on writing the full thing. i can't really make a lot of promises on update frequency, but i don't plan on it being a long chaptered fic (maybe around 15,000 words total) so it shouldn't take me too long.
> 
> i edit everything myself and proofread multiple times, so please feel free to tell me if i've missed anything!
> 
> obligatory disclaimer that this is all fiction, i don't own any of the characters (they're real people duh) and this isn't meant to make any assumption about their real lives.
> 
> and now i'll leave you to enjoy this mess of a fic
> 
> (title is from the equally named dodie song)

Dan isn’t lonely.

He really isn’t, no matter what Chris and PJ have been saying. He wasn’t being serious when he said it that one time, he thought it was clear that he’d been joking. He doesn’t sometimes dream of falling asleep next to someone and waking up with them still there. It’s all a lie.

That’s what he tells his mum when she calls him because “that lovely boy Paul said that you’ve been crying yourself to sleep!” He also reminds her that his best mate’s name is PJ, not just any name starting with a P. She laughs it off.

Once he’s finally convinced her that he will be okay if she doesn’t immediately fly out to seem him in the middle of tour (he’s in a band, they’re called _The Stars Are Not On Fire_ , they’re semi-successful, bla bla bla) he shoves his phone back in his pocket and heads off to make PJ pay.

The prank wars started during their first tour, when they were all sharing a very cramped tour bus and Chris _accidentally_ left his unwashed underpants on Dan’s pillow. Now they mostly do it for fun, to get out some of the energy they all have after shows, but occasionally it makes for a quite useful revenge plot.

They’ve already done soundcheck, the audience is supposed to be let in in only half an hour or so, so Chris and PJ really should be nearby. The fact that Dan’s done two laps of the backstage area without a single glimpse of them is definitive proof that they know exactly what they’ve done and are hiding.

His third lap (complete with checking behind doors and in closets) is interrupted by a hand on his arm and a small cough. Dan turns around, a bit annoyed at whoever is standing in the way of his uber important revenge plot, and- oh.

It’s Phil.

Dan does his best ‘I’m a cool guy and absolutely don’t have a tiny little crush on you’ impression. “Do you need something?” Shit. Definitely too aloof.

Before he can backtrack, Phil takes a step back and his face kind of falls. “Oh, no. I’m sorry, Daniel. You just seemed lost and it’s so close to showtime that you should really be careful about running into fans and-”

Dan quickly shakes his head. “No, no, I’m sorry. You’re perfectly fine, I was just startled.”

“Oh.” Phil smiles. “Well, in that case, is there anything I can help you with?”

He’s about to say a polite thank you and get the hell out of there when he has an idea. A brilliant but potentially horrific idea. “That depends,” he says, a grin slowly spreading across his face. “Do you have any experiences with prank-based revenge on grounds of emotional exploitation?”

-

Phil is absolutely horrible at pranks, it turns out. It’s not like they had a lot of time to plan, but they really could have come up with something better than a bucket of water balanced on top of a door.

Of course, instead of Chris and/or PJ meeting their watery doom and being relegated to a playing a show in sopping wet clothing, Dan is the one now hunched over a sink and trying frantically to squeeze some amount of water from his shirt.

He’s too focussed on assessing the damage (his hair is already starting to curl; this is a disaster) to hear the door open behind him. So yes, maybe he startles a little when Phil starts talking to him.

Phil looks worse off than Dan if that’s even possible. His hair is a mess, his glasses are crooked, and somehow there even appears to be a rip in his shirt (which is red with black, ladybug-like splotches. Honestly). He’s also talking a mile a minute.

“Daniel, I’m so, so sorry. I went to check if we had another one of your outfits backstage, but this was the last one, they’re all being washed. I have spare clothes with me if that’s of any help? And I think we have time to get you to hair and makeup if we hurry, Dodie’s on already but we can ask her to do an extra song or something, keep the crowd entertained. I really am sorry… ”

He trails off and Dan blinks. “Uh. It’s not your fault? I was the one who wanted to do the stupid prank in the first place, and then forgot about it.”

Phil runs his fingers through his hair. It looks really good. Uh. “No, I should have been more careful. I shouldn’t have suggested using all that water near the tech equipment. I can pay for any repairs myself; you might have to take it out of my wages, but I’ll manage. I take full responsibility.”

“Phil!” That does it. Phil ceases his hectic rambling and actually looks at him. Dan does his best to appear- trustworthy? “I’m okay. It’s all okay. The tour budget will cover repairs, or I will if it’s too much. Please don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.” He still looks a bit sheepish, but at least some semblance of calm instils itself. “So, I should probably get you to the stage.”

“Yeah.” Dan looks down at himself and grimaces. “Did you mean it when you said you had spare clothing?”

For the first time today, Phil actually smiles. “Yeah! We can stop there on the way to the stage.”

He’s following Phil out the door and through the confusing mess of hallways when he remembers something. “Hey, Phil?”

Phil turns around (he also bumps into a metal frame that almost crashes into some lights). “Yeah?”

“You can call me Dan, you know.”

-

And that’s how Dan finds himself on stage with a mop of wet curls on his head and wearing black skinny jeans that are just a bit too tight for him along with a t-shirt displaying a giant picture of some animal with its mouth open. Phil’s fashion choices really leave some room for debate.

Chris and PJ give him shit about it of course and the fans eat it up, screaming louder every time one of them makes a comment on Dan’s predicament.

Dan does sort of get his revenge though, when a pair pink of furry handcuffs is thrown on stage (their fandom has an interesting idea of what humour is) and he drags Chris and PJ together and cuffs them to each other.

His victory only lasts for about a minute because he has to release them so that they can actually play the show, only there weren’t any keys thrown on stage so the tech crew ends up coming on stage and cutting through the handcuffs with bolt cutters.

It’s a pretty accurate representation of his life if he’s being honest.

-

They’re in the car on the way to the hotel, all scrolling through twitter to get an idea of the response to the show, when PJ brings it up.

“Phil’s clothes, huh?”

“Shut it.”

“I’m just saying, how did that even happen? What was wrong with your clothes? And was there really nothing else you could wear?”

Dan groans. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Did they smell like him though?” Chris chimes in.

“What part of don’t want to talk about it do you two not understand?”

“Daaan.”

“No.”

“But. Daaaan.”

He squints his eyes. “You’re buying pizza. My choice.”

Chris and PJ stick their heads together (over Dan’s lap, because for some reason he’s sitting in the middle. He’s the tallest. He should not be sitting in the middle).

Chris sits up straight. “Final offer: one sizzler, wedges, cookies, and all eleven dips in exchange for a detailed account of whatever wet activities you and Phil engaged in.” A pause. PJ reaches over Dan’s lap and nudges Chris. “And you have to let PJ win one round of Mario Kart.”

Dan pokes PJ. “Really?”

“Keep your judgements to yourself, Danny boy. I want a taste of that sweet, sweet victory.”

Dan slumps back against the car seat. He knows defeat when he sees it. “Fine, you win. But I’m not talking until I have some hot carbs in my mouth.”

Chris and PJ high five each other. Right in front of Dan’s face.

“Remind me why I’m friends with you?”

“Because without us you wouldn’t be in an internationally successful band and also very rich?”

“Oh right, that.”

-

The Phil thing started in Jamaica when they were working on their second album last year.

Phil had been a roadie on tour for them during their first tour, and okay, maybe Dan noticed that he was endearingly clumsy and had a seemingly endless collection of unique (and ugly, but Phil pulled them off) t-shirts and his tongue stuck out between his teeth when he laughed.

Maybe he sometimes thought about his smile and his arms when he carried all their heavy equipment and the adorable frown he got on his face when he was concentrating. Maybe.

That didn’t give drunk (and somewhat high) Dan a right to blab about him to Chris and PJ in Jamaica during a game of truth or dare. Sober Dan barely even remembered the night, but they’ve been rubbing it in ever since.

At first it hadn’t bothered him much. Tour was over, he probably wouldn’t ever see Phil again. Let Chris and PJ have some fun at his expense.

But then their album was finished, and their second tour was starting and when the crew introduced themselves Phil was standing there, wearing a short sleeve button up shirt covered in corgis.

Dan greeted him like he had everyone else, but a second later PJ started sing-song whispering the kissing song in his ear, and Chris hummed the wedding march. And that pretty much set the precedent for the rest of the tour.

The thing is, Dan has never actually had a proper conversation with Phil. There’s been some polite chatter, casual greetings whenever he passes by, but not much else. The failed prank today was the closest they’d ever been, and Dan has no idea what to make of it.

Neither do Chris and PJ. Well, Chris throws a pillow at him (it falls off of his head and onto the half-eaten pizza) and PJ tries to kick him (he’s lying on the hotel room bed with his head hanging off the side and therefor kicks straight up into the air, so Dan isn’t fully sure how that was supposed to reach him where he’s sitting on the floor).

“Only you, Dan.” Chris steals a potato wedge.

Dan throws the sauce-covered pillow at him. He misses.

“It’s all your fault, you rats. I was just trying to revenge myself.”

PJ moans from the bed. Dan twists his head to look. “Peej? You okay?”

“Cheeeese.”

PJ had, despite much protest, ordered himself large, cheese stuffed pizza and then demolished the entire thing within twenty minutes. Dan kind of understands where he’s coming from.

“So anyway, now I’ve made a complete fool of myself in front of him and he was so nice that he tried to take the blame himself. More proof that Phil Lester is the fucking sun from the Teletubbies.”

“What does that make you then? A sad little rain cloud?”

“Shut up, rat.”

Chris shrugs. “Seriously though, was it so bad? I thought you wanted to spend time with him. And hey, you _did_ technically get into his pants after the first date!”

If Dan hadn’t already used his sauce pillow ammunition he would do so now. “Great job being serious.”

“Why, thank you so much.”

Dan dips his current slice of pizza (that’s considerably lacking some sauce and toppings) into the barbecue sauce. “Chris?”

“Yeah?”

“I like him.”

PJ makes some sort of noise from the bed, and Chris snorts. “We’re aware of that, Danny boy. You did wax poetic about the shape of his nose a couple months ago.”

“Focussing on the pizza now.”

-

The next two weeks are fairly eventless. They play eight shows, slowly making their way towards the east coast of the States. Dodie is a great opening act, warming up the crowd with ukulele sing-alongs of her original stuff and a few well-known covers.

To make the transition smoother, they usually start off their own set with a few acoustic songs as well, progressively moving their way up to a rocky sound. Chris always complains that his drums get thoroughly neglected during the first half and tries to make up for it by absolutely whaling on them as soon as he’s allowed to.

PJ’s the lead singer. When they’d started the band back in high school, he and Dan shared most of the vocals between them, but things just naturally progressed this way as Dan got more interested in writing and playing guitar than being the centre of attention all the time.

So now he mostly plays guitar, although he and Peej do have fun sharing the mike occasionally. It always reminds Dan of those early days, when they could only afford one mike and would stand stiffly shoulder to shoulder, not yet comfortable playing in front of any sort of crowd.

Chris does backup vocals from behind his drums, and during this tour they sometimes get Dodie to join them on keyboard for a song or two.

It’s fun. They always wanted to make sure it was fun, that they wouldn’t have to put on an act for their fans, and it seems to be working so far. They like to switch things up, throw in some natural banter (and occasionally actually throw things at each other).

So yeah, Dan is pretty happy with how things are going. He isn’t lonely. His mum doesn’t seem totally convinced of that since she’s started calling on a daily basis (damn you PJ) but he’s fine.

-

It’s the nineth show since the water incident where things get a bit shaky. It’s no big deal though, or at least that’s what their tour manager Helen tells them.

Dan kind of wants to beg to differ. It’s 7am and they’re already outside the venue, with the buses full of equipment and everything. Before this, they’ve always arrived a few hours before show time, just enough to get things set up and run through sound check.

They’d slept on the bus last night, because apparently driving through the night was necessary to reach the venue on time. Helen now informs them that this was a scheduling error.

No shit.

Dan’s kind of grumpy, because he’s not a morning person and he really thinks that the least they could have done was just let him sleep in on the bus, but PJ takes on his role of the ever-polite grown up person, asking what exactly this means and where they can go to pass time and other grown up stuff like that.

Once the situation has been discussed with the staff at the venue, PJ and Chris decide to take a stroll through town (with security in tow of course) and Dan drags himself into the venue to hopefully find a place to sleep. He would have stayed on the bus, but everyone else was gone and it was just a bit too creepy for his taste.

-

He wakes up to a loud noise right next to his head. There’s a possibility that he shrieks a bit.

The room he’s in appears to be empty, which really doesn’t aid in comforting his nerves. “Hello?”, he says quietly, not sure whether he would prefer for someone to answer or not.

And then the door slowly creaks open, and a black fringe pokes around the corner, and Dan decides that company is just what he needs right now.

“Phil?”

Phil takes a step forward, still mostly hidden behind the door. “I’m so sorry, Daniel. Dan. Sorry. I didn’t think anyone was in here, but then I saw you on the beanbag and you looked like you were sleeping so I tried to close the door quietly, and I almost did, but then, you know. It slipped.”

Dan pulls himself up out of said beanbag (it’s very big and had kind of swallowed him) and pads over to Phil at the door. “It’s fine, I probably shouldn’t be sleeping all day anyway. Uh, do you know what time it is?”

He could just pull out his phone and check, but he can’t really bare the thought of Phil leaving right now.

Phil checks his right wrist, and then his left, where he locates a simple wristwatch. Dan really shouldn’t find that as adorable as he does.

“It’s almost ten. Is there anything I can get for you?”

Dan figures he might as well shoot his shot. “Actually, do you have anywhere you need to be?”

Phil scrunches up his nose (again, adorable). “No? That’s actually why I came here in the first place, I just wanted to stay out of everyone’s way. I already finished setting up everything I’m capable of.”

Dan grins. “Great! Do you want to hang out with me? Chris and Peej pretty much abandoned me and my Switch is back on the bus, which is frankly too far away.”

Phil doesn’t answer right away, and Dan immediately gets second thoughts. What if he just wanted to be alone? What if he still thinks Dan is a moron because of the water incident? What if he can totally tell how much Dan fancies him and he doesn’t like it?

He quickly follows up his weird proposition before Phil ends up feeling any more uncomfortable. “Um, okay. It’s fine, uh, you can have the room if you want? I’ll just go find some other place to hide.”

He’s halfway down the hallway when he hears Phil behind him. “Dan! No, wait! You can stay, I just wasn’t sure you were being serious.”

Dan turns around to see Phil running towards him, yet another worried look on his face. “You were being serious, right? We could also just forget this ever happened if that’s better.”

And suddenly, Dan feels a bit giddy. “Phil. Come on, you spork. That bean bag is comfy as fuck and big enough for two people. Even two giants like us.”

-

It takes about seven seconds for the awkwardness to go away. Dan throws himself onto the beanbag the second they get back to the room and makes grabby hands for Phil to join him.

Phil sits down at the very edge. Pretty much as far away from Dan as possible. Dan chuckles semi-nervously. “Don’t you think your bum deserves a few more beans than that?”, he says, tugging on Phil’s sleeve to get him going.

Phil’s entire face lights up. “Did you know that face mites don’t have butts? They just die instead of pooping.”

And well, from there they’re off.

Dan talks about the weirdness of being a sort-of well-known personality (he despises words like famous and celebrity) and how he loves their fans, but it can get hard having to be _on_ all the time.

Phil regales him with embarrassing stories from his first few times being a roadie.

Pretty soon their going through their entire life stories, and even though Dan’s life pretty much sucked until age eighteen, telling Phil about it makes it all seem sort of okay. Like maybe it was worth it. The fact that Dan pesters Phil enough to make him demonstrate his full northern accent might help too.

Phil’s just finished telling a story about being bitten by a squirrel (“Where?” “In Florida.” “No, where on your _body_ you dummy”). There’s a moment of comfortable silence.

“Was I annoying you?”, Phil suddenly asks out of nowhere, shocking Dan out of his _philphilanimalsarmstouchingphil_ thoughts.

“Huh?” Ever so eloquent, that’s him.

“I just. Um. It’s no big deal, I just kind of felt like I kept bothering you? Not that much on the first tour, but you always seemed a bit off whenever we, like, interacted these last couple of months- I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be psychoanalysing you like that.”

“Phil.” Dan struggles with the almighty beanbag monster to sit up a bit. He wants to look Phil in the eyes for this. “You can really stop apologizing to me. You haven’t done anything wrong; I promise. I just always get tense before shows, Chris and Peej are used to it but I forget that I can come off as sort of prickly to people who don’t know about it.”

“Oh.” Phil seems to think about this for a bit. “I just thought that you could probably tell how much a fan I was, and I didn’t want you to think I was being all creepy and trying to get close to you, so-”

“Hang on,” Dan interrupts him. “You’re a _fan_? Like honest-to-god? Before you started working for us an everything?”

Phil nods. “Is that bad?”

“Phiiil. It’s cool! I’m really honoured.”

“Well you make great music. You should be used to everyone liking it.”

Dan grins. “That’s sweet of you to say, but we have plenty of haters. The majority of our fanbase consisting of teenage girls apparently automatically warrants a bunch of old white men to write us off as a _generic boyband with no appeal to anyone who can form a coherent sentence free of piercing screams_.”

“Did you just quote that? Really?”, Phil says, shaking his head.

“What can I say, I have a penchant for self-loathing.”

“Hm. Well for the record, I really do like your music. And I don’t see why teenage girls aren’t allowed to like anything without become a laughingstock. It doesn’t seem fair at all.”

“That’s what I say all the time! Sometimes I wish I could just throw all those fuckers in a giant pit of lava or something.”

Phil laughs. “If you want to fake a death, you could stage them peeing off of the Grand Canyon.”

This man is just full of surprises. “Gonna need an explanation for that one, buddy.”

“Tons of men die every year from trying to pee into the Grand Canyon! So you could kill them, pull their pants down and then throw them off the cliff and no one would ever be any wiser.”

Dan takes a moment to consider it. “How would I kill them though? Wouldn’t coroners be able to determine a cause of death that isn’t just the falling?”

Phil scrunches up his face, then grins. “Ice bullet! It kills and then melts away. Zero evidence.”

“Wow. I guess I know who I’ll be bringing my enemies to.”

-

They end up talking for more than five hours. Dan knows this because they only stop when PJ barges into the room and says “Dan, jeez, there you are. It’s half past three, we gotta go to soundcheck.”

Then he looks down at where Dan is sitting, originally next to Phil but now kind of half on top of him. His eyes open comically wide.

Dan jumps up before he can start anything. “Okay Peej, I’m coming. Hold your horses.” He feels a bit bad for just leaving Phil there like that, but he’s sure he’ll understand. Soundcheck is necessary, after all.

Only then Phil is nowhere to be found when Dan goes back to the room the minute he’s free to do so, and when Dan hangs around after the show to talk to him Phil always makes sure to keep plenty of distance between them.

So. Dan isn’t really sure what to think now.

Because they had a connection, he _knows_ they did. He doesn’t think he’s ever talked to someone for that long without feeling even an ounce of boredom or awkwardness. Phil is just so interesting and funny and adorable, and the whole conversation flowed in way Dan didn’t think was possible.

Could he have imagined all of that? Was Phil searching for an out the entire time?

It doesn’t seem like he’ll be finding out anytime soon, because one of the other roadies tells him that the band is waiting for him on the bus. He allows himself one last glance at Phil - two stacks of technical equipment away, loading something on to something else with wheels – and heads out. It clearly isn’t going to happen.

-

PJ insists that they make a pitstop on the way to the hotel, sending one of the crew members to pick up rocky road ice cream at the nearest gas station. dan doesn’t have it in him to put up a fight.

They open up the ice cream while they’re still on the truck, sharing the only two spoons they can find (why don’t they have spoons? Why would spoons go missing?) between the three of them and not talking about much else.

At the hotel they pick of their keys and go through their customary routine of finding the biggest room out of the three and holing up in there for most of the night. Dan’s room wins this time (they make a note on the score card Chris keeps in his wallet).

They pile onto the bed for a bit of a group cuddle. Dan likes this, likes that they’re all so comfortable with physical contact, that him being gay has never affected anything about their dynamic.

“Danny? Do you want to talk about it?”, Chris asks. PJ must have filled him in.

Dan sighs. “I just don’t know what happened. We were getting along really well, and then he would barely even look at me anymore.”

“Hm.” PJ makes a big show out of stroking his imaginary beard. “Could that possibly be because you jumped out of your cosy little embrace and ran out without so much as a second glance at him?”

“No”, Dan says. He looks to Chris for conformation. “But.. I didn’t mean it like that! I thought it was implied that I’d come back as soon as I could!”

Chris snorts. “And that, Danny boy, is why we use our words.”

“Fine. I’ll just tell him tomorrow that it was all a misunderstanding.”

-

Only Phil continues avoiding him the next day. And the next. And the one after that.

And suddenly it’s the last date of their North American tour and Dan is standing backstage at Madison Square Garden.

He snuck a peak already, and the place is absolutely jampacked. He kind of still can’t believe that it’s all for them (if he’s being honest it’s mostly for PJ, but that’s fine too).

They’ve played big crowds before, many times, been on countless late night talk shows and one day time talk show and national television, been mobbed by crowds in airports, had one girl hide out in a dumpster once to meet them, but for some reason this is when it really hits Dan for the first time: they’ve made it. This is most likely going to be the peak of his career.

Sure, they won’t phase out quickly, not with the number of fans they have right now and how they’re basically dominating the internet with a frankly ridiculous amount of memes featuring them going around, but it can’t get much better than this, and it sure has hell won’t go on like this forever.

It feels sort of bittersweet. He can’t even explain it to himself properly, but he feels like he’s been wasting all of this. Like other people would have deserved it more.

“Howell!”

He whips his head around at the sound of PJ’s voice. Him shouting like that only minutes before the start of a show is never ever a good sign.

“I’ve had a revelation.”

Dan groans. “And that is?”

“ _Try New Things_ is not sounding as good as it should be.”

“What are you on about? It sounded bloody sick in sound check, just like it has when we’ve been rehearsing and _playing it live_ for the last five months.”

PJ purses his lips. “Yes, and it’s been bothering me for just as long, but I’ve finally figured it out!”

He pauses. Dan waits for him to continue. And waits. Finally, he gives in. “And what was it that’s been making our lead single that thousands of people have been singing along with and dancing to for months sound so terrible?” (Okay, maybe it isn’t only now that Dan’s realized they’ve made it.)

PJ grins, and Dan can already tell that he will hate whatever comes out of his mouth next. “We need someone to play the triangle!”

What.

“What.”

“The triangle! You know how in the studio recording there’s always this _ding_ sound after the chorus? We’ve been missing it on stage.”

Dan doesn’t know. His expression clearly gives him away, because PJ sighs, gives him an exasperated glance, and runs away, probably in search of someone else to torment with his weird triangle fantasies. Dan doesn’t spare him any more thought. He can’t, not when there are literal minutes left until they need to be on stage and for some reason, at this moment, he feels more nerves and stage fright than he has in the last couple of years combined.

It’s just that Madison Square Garden means so much to him. It’s where he saw his first concert in America, together with PJ, right after they’d moved to New York to ‘make it big’. He still remembers standing in the crowd, so far away from the stage that the band wasn’t much more than a blur, arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, whispering about how that could be them some day.

Two weeks later they got their first record deal. Five months later, their first single unexpectedly made its way to the top of the charts and stayed there for fifteen weeks. Their album was talked about so much that he couldn’t leave the house without being recognized a month before the release. And the rest, as they say, is history.

-

Finally being on stage and performing feels as good and is just as nerve wrecking as Dan imagined it would be. It always is, but tonight just has that extra bit of pressure as the cherry on top.

The energy in the place is amazing, probably the best crowd they’ve ever had, and his attention is entirely split between trying to enjoy it much as possible that these people are here for them (mostly PJ) and trying his absolute darndest not to fuck up and ruin everything.

It’s safe to say that he’s caught a bit off guard when, while introducing _Try New Things_ , PJ announces that they’ll be joined by a special guest on stage.

As far as Dan knows, they’ve never had special guests on stage during anything (apart from Dodie, but she’s almost an honorary member of the band at this point, and he supposes Ed Sheeran did sing with them once, but that’s something completely different and Dan still isn’t fully sure that he didn’t dream it).

Chris is smirking at him from behind his drums, so he obviously knows what’s going on, and PJ has the biggest shit-eating grin on his face, and suddenly Dan thinks he has an idea of what might be happening. He is not happy. Not in the slightest. He kind of wants to run off the stage and hide.

Sure enough, he hears PJ say “Now please give a warm welcome to our very own roadie Phil on triangle!”, and the crowd’s loud (if slightly confused) roars, and then Phil fucking Lester is walking out on stage with a triangle, giving a little wave to the crowd before proceeding to stand near Chris’ drum kit. It’s awkward and everyone knows it.

Dan regrets, now more than ever, everything he’s ever told Chris and Peej about his stupid little crush. He knows they’re doing this for him, that they think that their meddling will magically make everything alright, but it won’t.

He’s missed his chance and he’s accepted that. He’ll use the three-week break to get over it, and he doesn’t even know if Phil will be with them for the next leg. He’d never gotten around to asking.

So this isn’t helping, not in the slightest.

No one really seems to know what to do, audience included, so Chris ends up just counting them in.

It’s a good song. Dan tries very hard to focus on playing the good song (that he helped write!) but he keeps looking over at Phil. The issue with that is that Phil hasn’t moved from his spot near Chris, who’s drums are at the back of the stage. Dan tries incorporating his glances into his natural movements, but he’s pretty sure that anyone really paying attention would call him out on his bullshit.

That’s why it’s kind of surprising when it’s not Dan who ends up making the most mistakes, but Phil. All he has to do is hit the fucking triangle once after every chorus, and Dan’s sure Phil has heard this song just as many times as they have by now, but he still plays it either too early or too late or too often every single time. And yet Dan can’t bring himself to care.

Phil is up on stage with him, and so what if Dan spends at least half of the song looking at him? It’s fun to see him stumble over nothing and scrunch up his face in apology every time he does something wrong, and he’s wearing all black for once, their very own _Try New Things_ merch, which looks even better on him than on the models that wore it for the official pictures on their website.

After the final chorus and the final _ding_ PJ bids Phil goodbye and he shuffles off the stage the same way he came on, to an equally confused sounding applause. Dan is both relieved and already misses him.

They play their last few songs. Dan doesn’t think about Phil. It’s fine. He is absolutely not going to murder PJ (and Chris) once they get off stage.

-

Dan’s already decided that he’s done with trying to get Phil’s attention back, so he doesn’t really know what to do with himself when said Phil comes up to him at their afterparty (Dan never goes to these things but they just finished North America and PJ threatened him with a dip ban if he didn't show up).

“Dan? Can we talk?”, Phil says, as if that isn’t exactly what Dan has been trying to do for the past few weeks.

“Sure, Phil. Go ahead.” He knows he’s being a bit unfair and icy, but in his defence the bar is way too loud and crowded and he really didn’t think he’d ever speak to Phil again.

“I was just wondering. Um. Do you know anything about prank-based revenge on grounds of unannounced forced roadie participation?”

Dan laughs. He proper laughs, doesn’t care that everyone around him is staring, and he grabs Phil’s sleeve (green with purple polka dots) and pulls him outside to scheme.

If Phil ends up drenched in water and borrowing one of Dan’s hoodies, Dan doesn’t have anything to do with it.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! stay tuned for updates!
> 
> please leave a comment and/or kudos if you feel like it, it really means a lot to me
> 
> sending free vibes to everyone,  
> e


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